I am a writer of novels, plays and film scripts. I live in Manchester England with my partner Andy and our teenage son Jack. Andy and I started my Newsletter Raw Meat and began publishing with Rawprintz in 1999 to showcase my work. Some of you may be confused by my continual references to Ziggy, that’s my wheelchair! Both Andy and I are writers. I’ve recently lost my sight – hence the continual reference to my being confused!
Thanks for visiting.

7.7.12

KILLING TIME

A novel by

NICOLA BATTY

Chapter Eight.

8th September, 1888 - 29, Hanbury Street, Whitechapel.

As
the early morning light grows steadily stronger, gathering its’ strength in
preparation for the new day, the battered body of Annie Chapman becomes visible
to the crowd of curious onlookers who gather in the narrow street outside. Fibres of necks twist and stretch to get a
glimpse of the woman who is lying on her back, her stomach gaping open, and
eyes staring vacantly at the creeping new morning. Those people who live upstairs and whose windows overlook the
back yard are following the advice of an enterprising laundry-woman across the
road and they are doing a brisk business charging a ha’penny for ‘a good view
of the gruesome murder’. The policemen
however, try to assume their usual manner of detached professionalism; treating
it as routine, they try to ignore the smell of blood in the air, the violence
of Annie Chapman’s’ death. They try,
but they mostly stand around the yard, shocked and silent. The Police Surgeon, having examined the
body, turns his back on it and wanders over to the other side of the yard. He fixes his eyes on some vague area of the
sky, watching the ragged pieces of cloud blown slowly across the pale
background, tearing themselves away from each other, leaving messy wisps greyly
straggling. Annie Chapman has been
disembowelled. The murderer has been
even more thorough this time, more meticulous in his operations. Perhaps he had more time at his disposal, or
his hand had simply become more confident, more controlled, the second time
around. He has removed her uterus and
the upper portion of her vagina and most of her bladder – and these are still
missing. The policemen are looking
reluctantly in dustbins and gutters; but it is generally accepted that the
murderer will have taken these organs away with him, either to destroy away
from the scene of the crime or else to keep as macabre souvenirs. The rest of the intestines, the murderer has
left for the policemen to see, draped over Annie’s left shoulder like a Roman
toga. Blood surrounds the body, though
most of it has been soaked up by her clothing.
Like Polly Nichols before her, Annie has two deep red gashes running
across her throat, side by side, neatly severing her windpipe. Indeed, the murderer has cut so deep as to
almost slice her head from her body.

Already
the policemen are beginning to piece together the last few hours of Annie
Chapman’s life. Some women friends who
were also prostitutes had last seen her alive in a pub in Spitalfields market
place. That night, ‘Dark’ Annie had
been wearing black, as she had been ever since the day her husband had died,
about four years ago. From the sight of
her habitual wearing of black, a special attachment to her husband may have
been guessed at. In fact, this was not
so; Annie Chapman now lived alone, having been separated from her husband
fifteen years before. She only realised
he was dead when the money he paid her every week to live on, had suddenly
stopped. Since then, ‘Dark’ Annie had
been earning a living by taking in odd bits of crochet work, sewing, selling
flowers and prostitution. She lived in
various lodging houses around Whitechapel and Spitalfields, confronting each day
of life with a determination that was derived only partly from the bottle. Small and thick-set, she concealed within
her compact frame an energy which far surpassed her forty-five years. With features that echoed the colour of her
clothes, a broken nose from a fight and two missing front teeth, nobody would
call her a pleasant woman to look at, particularly since she had acquired a
black eye following a disagreement with another prostitute over a borrowed
piece of soap. Ever since this
incident, her friends will tell the police, Annie had been complaining of
feeling unwell. She suspected that
something might have been damaged inside, though Annie was neither too weak nor
too drunk to struggle against her attacker, as the bruises on her face and neck
show. The last person to have seen her
alive since she left the pub, was a night watchman, who will describe the man
she was apparently haggling with in the backyard of twenty-nine Hanbury Street,
as ‘dark, foreign looking and wearing a deerstalker hat’. This house is a well-known ‘picking-up’ spot,
although not an established brothel.
Annie had taken her client into the back yard and she had been standing
at the top of the steps leading up to the back door, when the night watchman
had seen them. An hour later, a man who
lodged in the house, when he left to go to work had found Annie’s body at the
bottom of the steps.

The
bright red handkerchief that is tied loosely around her neck looks like another
bloodstain against the black of her clothes.
The Police Surgeon still stands with his back turned towards the body,
staring into the sky. He leans against
the broken fence, which separates this yard from the next; he has not said a
word to anyone since he first arrived and set eyes on Annie Chapman’s corpse,
nearly an hour ago. The murderer has taken
great care to rob Annie of any dignity she may have clung to in life; the few
last remaining shreds ripped from her.

A
strange touch, the murderer has left all of Annie’s worldly possessions laid
out in a neat row by her feet; two brass rings and a few pennies and
farthings. She lays flat on her back,
exposed like a pig on a slaughterhouse table, her legs drawn up, her knees
turned outwards, her skirts pushed up over her hips. She has been posed specially for death. There is no mistaking the contempt, which the murderer must have
felt for his victim as he moved her limbs into the position that he has chosen
for them. He carefully manipulated and
he smiled to himself as he did so. He
was doing the right thing, he was quite sure of it. There was not a trace of doubt in his mind.

And
as the early morning greyness strengthens, the murderer is walking along the
Victoria Embankment, back to his lodgings on King’s Bench Walk. He lives in what is known as the lawyer’s
area, that strange, classless part of the Temple, hovering somewhere between
shabbiness and respectability. It
exists in the space between, neither one nor the other. The murderer feels perfectly at home here, as
one would imagine that he would; his feet sink easily into this vacated space,
for he’s an adaptable sort of person, a man for all seasons. He can’t afford to live on his barrister’s
wages and so he teaches part-time at a boy’s school in Blackheath village, on
the other side of the Thames. He finds
the scholarly hush of both the Law Courts and the classrooms stifling and so he
unwinds by playing cricket for the school team. Those wide-open grassy fields remind him of the countryside where
he grew up, in Dorset. The murderer
pauses on the Embankment for a moment, turning his great, sad eyes back in the
direction he has just come from. He’s
remembering how he used to sit on his mother’s knee and make daisy chains with
her when he was young in the field, which they always used to go to. (He and
his mother both used to call it ‘our daisy-field’ and then smile secretively at
each other, as though sharing something quite special and particular between
them). Both he and his mother had long,
nimble fingers and they threaded the flowers together to form one single chain,
which seemed to go on forever.
Sometimes his brother William would come and join them in the field; but
he would soon grow restless and impatient, wanting his brother to come down and
swim in the river with him. He would
refuse to sit down and join in the ritual threading of the flowers; for he was
clumsy and would probably only have broken the chain. The murderer leans on the railings, looking down into the filthy
Thames below. He can remember those
days as though they were only a moment ago, or even as though they still exist
for him, trapped beneath the false glass surface of his mind. The past becomes the present; it all churns
up into one vast tangled stew of memories and experiences, experiences and
memories, he doesn’t know which anymore.
But he doesn’t allow this long grey area to worry him. He accepts all things with a protective
layer of dignity wrapped all around him, an air of melancholy resignation,
which shields the inner core. The inner
core, which no one can reach; his own alienation from himself terrifies
him. He is not in control anymore. Slowly the murderer descends the steps of
the Embankment to the water’s edge. His
dark eyes scan the surface of the water sadly, as though searching for some
lost part of himself. He strokes the
wavering line of his thin moustache, looking around quickly. His movements are changed; he drifts without
reality no longer. Stooping right down
and simultaneously drawing his hands from his pockets, he washes both them and
the knife in the river. He thinks for a
moment of dropping the knife into the Thames but decides not to; it has become
almost a part of him now, moulding itself to him like a sticky extra
organ. With a knife in his hand he can
dictate the circumstances, he can carve out the niche he wants them to fill. He replaces the knife in his pocket and
climbs the steps back up to the roadside.

Back
in Hanbury Street, the Police Surgeon throws a piece of sacking over the body
of Annie Chapman. There is an almost
tangible feeling of relief amongst the other policemen in the yard, though
still, nobody says anything. The
Surgeon watches them standing around in silent groups, cracking their knuckles
nervously. One of them begins to whistle
softly; but the sound soon trails off, crushed by the brutality of the situation. The Police Surgeon picks up his bag and
begins to walk out of the yard, going out through the back gate so as to avoid
passing the body again. He must now
return to his office and write a report on the state of the butchered remains
of Annie Chapman. He closes his eyes
briefly as he pauses, one hand on the wooden board which serves as a gate. The photographs he has taken cling to the
retina of his mind’s eye. He wonders
how the murderer is feeling now.

1.7.12

KILLING TIME

A novel by

NICOLA BATTY

Chapter Seven

6th September 1991 - Shoreditch High Street

Early
on the following Monday, Louise left the house heading for Shoreditch. She carried the black card Guy Saint had
given her clutched inside her jacket to protect it from the driving rain. She kept glancing at the address as she
hurried along Hanbury Street and onto Commercial Road, as though she feared
that the elegant silver letters would fade away into nothingness while she
wasn’t looking. Despite both the early
hour and the rain, there were several people lingering in front of shop
windows, or striding purposefully to work, briefcase in hand, or to take their
children to school. Louise tried to
avoid meeting their eyes, feeling that this would compromise her in some way;
she felt guilty, as though she had broken some unwritten law which everybody
else held sacred, though she didn’t know why.
She passed a number of old Victorian warehouses which now contained
offices or studios, before she found the right one. It was a grimy building with a large window in the front, where a
grey blind was pulled down. The words Homeopathy - Acupuncture - Spiritual Healing
- Clairvoyance were written in violet across the bottom of the window and
Louise recognised Guy Saint’s black card displayed with a few others just
inside the doorway. She hesitated
before pushing the door, unsure if it would be open yet. It led into a narrow corridor, with a flight
of stairs at the end. To her left was
an office from which a young woman appeared.

“Can
I help you? We’re not actually open
yet.” The woman shuffled the pile of
papers she was carrying officiously, although her smile was open and
friendly. “Do you have an appointment
to see someone?”

Louise
shook her head. She felt
panic-stricken, as though every move she made was being watched and hindered,
obstacles placed in her path.

“No,
but I want to see … Mr. Saint.”

“I’ll
see if he’s in. Who shall I say…?”

“Tell
him Louise. He’ll know me.”

The
young woman nodded and smiled, picking up a phone on her desk. Louise waited in the doorway, folding Guy
Saint’s card over and over until it was just a tiny square.

“Mr.
Saint’ll see you. Upstairs, second door
on the left.”

Louise
needed no further prompting. She almost
ran up the stairs as if they were her own heavenly escape route leading to her
private sanctuary high above the clouds.
There were two doors on either side of the landing; both of them grey
with a pane of frosted glass - both unmarked.
She felt disorientated, as though this was a deliberate move to try and
confuse her. But then one of the doors
opened and the tall figure of Guy Saint emerged to greet her with the slight,
vague smile that was so typical of him.

“Louise,
come in!” He led her into his office and closed the door; he seated himself in
front of his desk, which was pushed into an alcove immediately behind the door,
right in the corner, so that it could hardly be seen. “Can I offer you some coffee?”

Louise
shook her head, looking round the room for a chair. A dark blue armchair near
the window seemed the only one; either that or a matching two-seater sofa along
the wall.

“Drag
a chair over.” Instructed Saint. “What can I do for you?”

“I
need to speak to you.” Louise hesitated, realising that this much was already
obvious. “It’s about Harriet, I thought you might be able to help.”

Saint
took out a cigarette and lit it slowly. Louise watched his movements, which
seemed to flow along with the grace and inevitability of a dream. His white
shirt was fastened at the wrists with slender black chains she noticed; it was
almost impossible to tell where the smooth fabric of his shirt ended and his
flesh began. He was dressed entirely in
black and white, like a character from a ‘film noir’ classic, cut moodily from
the celluloid background, shadows falling across his face… black and white,
areas of alternating light and dark.
The dimensionless black of his eyes - which she now realised were turned
directly upon her.

“Well,
it’s common sense, isn’t it? Anyone can
see it’s not going to be easy juggling two times around, two lives. It can't be easy.”

“But
that’s just it, you see.” Louise sat
forward on her chair. “It is easy for
me – in fact, it’s becoming so damned easy, that it’s… doing my head in,
completely. I’m so scared… I don’t want this to happen anymore. I don’t want anything more to do with
Harriet. I hardly know who I am anymore,
I’ve got no control.”

The
vividness of her dream returned to her with a sharp chill like the edge of a
blade as she spoke about it, giving some sort of temporary substance to the
Victorian London. The terror of turning, the terrible ease of it.

“But
you know… you don’t really have to be frightened of it. This is an incredible… gift you have. And you can learn to control it, to click in
and out of Harriet, at will.”

“I
know, I know. Look, I appreciate how
incredible it must sound now but you have to stand back, get things in
proportion.”

Louise
stood up, turning away from Saint and gazing out of the window instead.

“Proportion! Oh, what are
you talking about? Don’t try and tell me I’m making a big thing out of this, I
should treat it like a big adventure…"

“Louise,
I’m not saying that. Of course I’m not
saying that.”

“Well,
that’s what it sounds like. This was a mistake coming here. I thought you might
be able to do something to help.”

“Which
I can, I’ve said. I’ll teach you to
control this… Harriet.”

“Oh,
I don’t know.” Turning from the window,
Louise found herself staring at a huge print, which hung on the wall above the
dark blue sofa. At first she thought
that it depicted nothing but vague grey shapes against a very faintly pink
background. The picture disturbed her,
seeming to imply bulky, formless things without actually naming them - which
made them none the less real. Then she
recognised the painting as Turners’ Sunrise
with Sea-monsters, but instead of the familiarity soothing her, it
increased her unease. “I’d rather just
get rid of her, I want to stay me.”

“But you can, that’s what I’m saying.
It may feel like Harriet’s taking you over and using you according to
her own whims, but you can control her.”
As Saint spoke, Louise noticed that there were spots of colour high on
his sculptured cheekbones and his eyes glowed with an almost religious
fervour. “And then, don’t you see, you
can use your… experiences as you will…
it doesn’t have to be frightening at all?”

“Maybe
not for you.” Louise caught his eye
briefly and looked away at the rain masking the dome of St. Paul’s. She felt safer with her back turned to him,
when she didn’t have to risk the draining confrontation with his eyes. “But, I’m the one who’s actually going
through this and I’ve had enough, I want to finish it here. Why can’t you
understand? Why won’t you do
something?”

“Louise,
I do understand, I really do. But I
think you’re looking at it the wrong way.
In time, you’ll feel more in control.
All right, you feel scared now but that’ll pass. Think … think what you could learn about
life a hundred years ago! Your fear will pass you know, as you learn to
manipulate your experiences. Become
distanced from them… and that’s where I
can help you.”

“I
don’t think I want that kind of help. All this talk of manipulation and being
able to control becoming Harriet seems irrelevant. Can’t you see I don’t want any part of it?” Louise gazed at the
print on the wall, seeing the sea-monsters rising up like long-forgotten ghosts
through the gloom, the thick grey fog of Whitechapel. “If you’d been there… if
you’d seen that murdered woman… stood so close you could smell the blood… then you'd understand.”

“But
that’s just it, you see. I understand
all this much more than you think I do, and that’s why you learning to control
your experiences isn’t irrelevant, it’s a necessary part of coming to terms
with Harriet.” Saint paused, looking at
the books, which were lined above his desk on three shelves, reaching almost to
the ceiling. “You were right to come
back to me, you know. You think I don’t
understand your fear but you have to see beyond all that. While the rest of us can only read about
Victorian times, you can actually be
there. It’s real to you.” He shook his
head slowly, “Really Louise, you can’t even think about missing this opportunity,
take it!”

Louise
tutted irritably. “You talk about it as if it was a free prize-draw or
something.”

Smiling
vaguely, Saint stood up and walked over to Louise. She could feel him standing behind her; a presence cut from the
shadows themselves, an imagined shape and substance, torn out with a ragged
edge half-say between this world and the next.
A misfit, like Caliban; devoid of any sense of really belonging
anywhere.

“Perhaps
there’s an element of truth in that.
Life’s a series of choices, isn’t it?
It’s all a big game, really - you just have to try and stay in control.”

“Easier
said than done though, isn’t it?”

“Of
course, it always is but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.” He took Louise’s arm, leading her back to
the armchair. “Sit down Louise, this is
where I can help you.”

She
took a step back as though she were being physically cornered. “I don’t think so. What are you going to do?”

“I
don’t like the sound of that. Wait…
wait a minute, I don’t think this is a good idea.” Louise felt the hard edge of Saint’s desk behind her back. She wanted to turn and flee as far away from
this office as possible. “I’ve told you
what I want and it’s not that… to go into a trance and not even know what I’m
doing. You say it’ll make me feel more
in control but it won’t - it’ll do just the opposite. You'll be in control;
you'll be the one who’ll be manipulating me.
I won’t really have any say in it.”

Saint
looked at her, he appeared genuinely confused.
Then he shook his head and shrugged helplessly, laughing.

“Oh,
come on, you can’t really mean that.”
He paused, perching on the arm of the chair Louise had vacated and took
out another cigarette. “Think about
it. Do I really look like a villain to
you?”

“Well,
that’s what it feels like, anyway.”

“You’ve
got a wild imagination, you know that, don't you? I only want to help you."

“Oh,
I know… I don’t really know what I mean.”
Sighing, she turned away; as she did so, she knocked against the pile of
books which were balanced on the edge of Saint’s desk, which in turn knocked a
couple of others off the other end. She
stopped them just before they fell to the floor. “Sorry,” she mumbled, pushing them to the back of the desk. As she did so, she noticed that the book
underneath was lying open and she thought she recognised the layout of the
pages. The photograph on the right-hand
page was of Annie Chapman, the second Ripper victim, lying flat on her back in
the yard on Hanbury Street. The book
was The Real Jack the Ripper; a bigger edition than Louise’s certainly
and hard backed, but nevertheless, unmistakable. She sneaked a quick glance over her shoulder at Saint, who was
not looking at her but gazing instead at the print of Sunrise of Sea-monsters, smoking thoughtfully. Putting the other book back on top of The
Real Jack the Ripper, she glanced at the spine. A Study of the Mind of the Ripper she read and put the
book down quickly. She felt as if she
had uncovered something vaguely nasty and perhaps even dangerous. A few sheets of paper covered with Saint’s
elegant writing were now exposed where she had pushed the books on top of them
back. She read the words,
‘Whitechapel – August 31st
1888 – murder of Polly Nichols on Bucks Row.
How much does Harriet know of this murder? Did she see the Ripper?
Would she be able to identify him again?’

“What
do you think you’re doing?” Saint was
beside her suddenly, his voice strained and hard, a cutting edge. “These are private papers, you know. Confidential.”

“Yes,
I can see that,” said Louise icily. She
allowed herself to be pushed aside, feeling drained and powerless. “Now I see why you’re so interested in
Harriet. Why you want to make me go
back again.”

Saint
piled the papers up and shoved them in a drawer. Every muscle in his face seemed tightened, as if they were all
attached to the same pulley system which had been wound round several times,
pulling in the catgut threads. He sighed,
staring at her coldly.

"I'm afraid I really don't know what
you’re talking about.”

"Oh, I think you do, Mr. Saint.”

“The
Ripper book, is that what you’re so upset about?”

“I
don’t like being used for your fucking research,
that’s all and I’m sure Harriet feels the same.”

There
was a pause. Saint gazed at her
impassively, taking a long draw from his cigarette. The scar across his face seemed to be livid and pulsating, a
thing alive amidst the blank space.

“You
amaze me, Louise. I’ve never encountered anyone quite so paranoid.” He shrugged, smiling slightly. “There’s absolutely no reason for you to react like this.”

“Background,
that’s all. I like to know what I’m
dealing with. I’ve got a particular
fascination with the Ripper, I thought you knew that.”

Louise
hesitated. She stared at the smouldering cigarette between Saint’s
fingers. “I did.”

“Well,
then I don’t really see why you should be so suspicious. What do you think I’m going to do to you?”

“I
don’t… I just think there’s more to it
than that.” She paused, beginning to
turn away. “I just don’t think I trust
you, that’s all.”

“Well,
at least I know where I stand.” Saint said brightly, leaning over his desk and
stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray there. He leant back against the desk, folding his arms
thoughtfully. “But seriously Louise,
think about what I’ve said, I’m sure I can help you. I’m really not interested in… using you or anything, despite what
you think.”

Louise
said nothing. She paused in the doorway,
reluctant now, to leave and close the door on this, perhaps her only chance of
escape from the turmoil. She glanced
back at Saint, who was still standing by the desk, watching her. As their eyes met, he smiled vaguely and
gave a little shrug, almost of apology.

“Of
course, I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to. And I understand your reluctance… I think
I’d feel the same way in your position, anyone would. But I really don’t think you’ve got much choice in the
matter. Which sounds melodramatic, but…
well, I think you appreciate that the situation is a pretty desperate one,
don’t you?” Raising his eyebrows, he
walked towards her resting his hand above her head on the edge of the door. He seemed to be on the point of physically
preventing her from leaving, but then again, he could simply be leaning, or
even keeping the door open for her. It
was all so ambiguous; everything about him had two edges, the blade and the
healing wand. Health restored, sanity
regained. The control rope caught and
pulled tight. “Because I don’t think
that this thing with Harriet is going to become any easier to keep under
control unless you… allow me to intervene, to help you master the time-slip. You really can’t just let things go on the
way they are now. What’ll happen is
that you will lose your grip, sooner or later.” He paused. Louise stared
at the scar trickling over the line of his jaw; it struck her for the first
time that the deep gash was surely the result of a knife attack. “But I think you know that already, don’t
you?”

Louise
nodded mutely. She swallowed and shook
her head.

“But
still… I can’t do it.” She looked at
him quickly, just feeling the impact of his words. “What do you mean, ‘lose your grip’? On what? Sanity… or
myself, me?” Again, the vague smile, the scar creased for
a moment like a paper bag. Louise could
feel the answer suddenly creeping towards her on silent claws, its’ inevitable
stealth contained within the tough skin, the long drawn-out line of Fate. “Or both, maybe?” Turning quickly Louise broke the thread that ran between them,
the eye contact that held her like a wizard’s spell, a healing promise tainted
black around the edges. She left
quickly, heading downwards, following the sucking spiral without looking back,
taking the stairs two at a time.